Be sure to take notes of how it turns out. Rarely do you get it dead on the first time. I think there has been some solid recipe help though. Taste, tweak and repeat till you nail down exactly what you are looking for.

I agree that adding a second controller might save you some headache and heartache down the road. I f you are anything like me, you might see fit to repurpose that chest freezer down the road (in the near or distant future) as a second fermenting (one for ales, one for lagers) chamber or a chamber for lagering beers. In either case you want to be able to control what is going on in that freezer independently.

I would ask myself "Is it mango first, then beer, or is it Belgian Beer first, then mango" and enter it accordingly. I.E. - Mango first would be in "fruit beer" and Belgian first would be in "Belgian Specialty".

I have too. I am willing to bet higher pH than that! LOL, pretty high scoring too...I guess it just makes me wonder if it would have been that much better, if it could have been the difference between 2nd and 1st place like JP says. Who knows???I do know that Martin, JP, Gordon Strong, the late Greg Noonan and countless other all believed in water adjustment such as pH and sulfate to chloride ratio. They are far better brewers than me with a ton more experience - so my money is with the adjustments!

MMitchem, in regards to your dopplebock, Ive found that 1 lb of crystal malt is generally the perfect amount to get your pH right with distilled water. I would not add any chalk whatsoever with 1 lb of crystal. Up the clacium chloride and gypsum to get your calcium back up to offset the chalk and get rid of that in your recipe. I bet your pH will fall right into place!

Using no chalk in the recipe makes the mash pH too low...and it only gets more acidic with the Calcium that is added by Gypsum and CaCl2. The Bicarbonate helps me get around 5.4-5.5 and allows me to have sufficient Ca as well as a solid Sulfate to Chloride ratio...

Haha, I remember that commercial, think it was Geico or something. Either way, these guys have laid it out for the world, and probably not for the first time either Just solid information that has definitely helped me get a grip on the importance of brewing water, especially pH...

Times like these I am thankful that folks like Martin have made such great and useful software available to us. If you find it to be useful, I think donations are the right way to tell him you want more of the same. Thank you all for helping me get some really good prnciples down for building up good brewing water profiles. But more than that - helping me understand what I am looking for in water to make it appropriate for what I am brewing. That sort of knowledge is priceless.

No! The safe range of room-temperature mash pH is about 5.3 to 5.5. That indicates that the pH in the mash is 0.2 to 0.3 units lower, but that doesn't really matter. The only thing we need to focus on is the 'room-temperature measurements'.

A 5.4 room-temperature pH is a good all-around target. If you want your beer a little sharper or tarter, aim a little lower (5.2 to 5.3). If you want your dark beers to be a little softer, aim for 5.5. But don't get carried away with a high pH target. All kinds of things go wrong when you exceed about 5.7 to 5.8. You can be a little low with pH and the beer should taste OK. But it won't be so good if its a little high.

That's right - NO with exclamation lol.Roger that - go for the room pH.